The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains

Summary

Frederick Marryat’s The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains is a unique literary work that stands out amidst the body of work of an author best known for pioneering the genre of the sea story. Excised from Marryat’s novel The Phantom Ship (1839) and published separately as The White Wolf it represents the first appearance of a female werewolf in Victorian literature.

Krantz, a fugitive from justice, takes refuge in the Hartz mountains with his three children and lives by hunting in the forest and subsistence farming. One day he chases a white wolf, and meets a hunter with a beautiful daughter. He marries the daughter, but the children soon discover that their new step-mother is not the pretty kind woman she pretends to be. She has an altogether more sinister side...